


Start in the Middle, Give Me no Ending

by VerdantMoth



Category: Merlin (TV)
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Drug Use, Established Relationship, M/M, Suicidal Thoughts, Suicide Attempt
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-25
Updated: 2018-10-25
Packaged: 2019-08-23 06:09:53
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,464
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16613408
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/VerdantMoth/pseuds/VerdantMoth
Summary: Merlin’s story starts in the middle like this; He is sitting at his desk and it’s a quiet day, slow and lazy, sun filtering through the window and his favorite song playing on repeat in his ears. The thought, sudden and unwanted, appears behind his ears, itchy like that stupid little plastic piece that comes on tags. It sits back there and he mostly can ignore it because today is a good day and he’s well rested and dinner tonight with the lads is at his favorite pub, even if he’d really rather go home and sleep.





	Start in the Middle, Give Me no Ending

**Author's Note:**

> Please, read the tags and be mindful. Even happy endings can have horrible middles. If you chose to read this, you do so understanding it deals with some heavy shit and it makes no apologies for it.

Merlin’s story starts in the middle like this; He is sitting at his desk and it’s a quiet day, slow and lazy, sun filtering through the window and his favorite song playing on repeat in his ears. The thought, sudden and unwanted, appears behind his ears, itchy like that stupid little plastic piece that comes on tags. It sits back there and he mostly can ignore it because today is a good day and he’s well rested and dinner tonight with the lads is at his favorite pub, even if he’d really rather go home and sleep.

Of course, it sits in the back of his mind for while. Never really doing anything, just hanging out, popping in during the quiet moments. Until one day he’s driving home. Home, to his mother’s house, to the stone cottage on the back roads tucked into the hills. It’s pouring and it’s late and the thought sort of whispers against his cheek, a cool caress that startles him only because he wasn’t expecting it. When he retells the story, all he can think about is the limb he  _ felt  _ rush through the windshield and past his cheek. It was raining and the other car was speeding and his tires are crap and the road curved and it was dark and honestly, all he knows is the branch was almost soft as his kissed his cheek.

After that, he knows he’s obsessing. Obsessing isn’t the same as doing. He curls under his covers and he trades meals for whiskey and maybe he takes the medication and maybe he doesn’t but no one is around to know either way. He goes to work and he sits in front of his computer and he enters information into spreadsheets. None of means anything to him, he’s not sure he ever learned this language, but they let him sit there and when his 8 hours are up they remind him to go home. If they give him a funny look, if they have to say his name three times, he’s just tired and the weather is getting cold and “I’ll sleep in Saturday and eat some soup and all will be well.  _ Honest _ ."

If he stops showing up a week later, well, they knew he was sick.

He doesn’t mean for the cigarettes to appear. Or, really, he didn’t mean for Arthur to find them. What’s one or two fags when he’s stressed? His mum has been on him to visit and his boss needs his reports yesterday and Arthur’s never around anymore and he’s just tired, so damn tired all the time. And he bought the pack two weeks ago so he hasn’t totally picked it up again and “Oh my god, Arthur, it’s just one smoke, lay off.”

It grows and it expands and he can feel it, throbbing behind his eyes. Gwaine tells him to maybe close out of Netflix and Merlin quietly reminds him to maybe close his own legs first. Merlin isn’t sure if he flinches because of the words he’s said or because Gwaine slaps him across the face. He ought to apologize. He ought to shower and eat a real meal and call his mum and help Arthur plan their date and finish those goddamned reports still sitting on his desk.

He sleeps instead. Arthur’s growing worried and it rankles Merlin. “I can take care of myself; I’ve done it before.” He’s got the scars to prove it, the bottles to maintain it. He knows, when he walks into the kitchen and the cutlery drawer is empty that Arthur doesn’t believe him. Anger, sharp feathered and ember hot, sweeps over him. He slings his fist and glass shatters and Arthur’s cheek is bleeding, but he doesn’t back down. “As if I’d go that route anyway.”

He hates their one bedroom flat, because there’s no guest room for him to escape to. Instead he grabs his keys and he packs a duffle and he just drives until the evening light is nothing but the orange glow of street lamps in the fog and the music tightens around his neck, choking him until his vision blurs and he’s not sure of the faces roaring past him on the road.

He drinks, and beads slide down his throat, slick and bitter. He drinks, and it taste like chalk and cakes against his tongue. He drinks until the music wails and the world spins and the evening and day are blue and red and his skin feels like rocks under the water and he can sleep, finally.

It ends, a little like this. He wakes up in an unfamiliar bed under a scratchy blanket. Everything is muted, the light hurts his eyes, and there’s a near constant beeping that makes him want to rip his ears off. His arms ache and his face hurts, and no one is around to explain anything until he’s sobbing and thrashing against the sheets. His mum appears, cries over him for a bit. Gwaine appears and he sits awkwardly at the foot of the bed and he cracks jokes, but he never looks at Merlin and he never says anything worth hearing. Arthur doesn’t show up, but the doctors do and they tell him he’s lucky and he can go home soon but they need him to attend special outpatient counseling and he’ll probably be achy a while because it’s been two weeks, but everything should be fine-just-fine, shoulder pats.

It ends, and he goes home to a flat that’s half full and a green calendar blocked off every Monday, Wednesday, and Thursday, from 2-6 p.m. He goes back to work, part time, and he showers at 7 every morning and Gwaine brings him meals every day until Merlin cooks for him, just to prove he remembers how. He runs on the weekends and he cycles everywhere he needs to go and he watches as the bruises and the lacerations fade. He puts on weight. He finds new music to listen to. He buys a cat and puts a downpayment on a new old coupe and he’s never on the road when the evening fades.

It ends and it leaves its scars, but he thinks that’s the way it’s supposed to go. The thought never leaves, never completely, but he learns how to tame it, how to bend it, how to will it beneath busy-daily-happy. It’s over and his bed is empty and he wants so badly to tuck his feet beneath someone’s thighs, but it’s over and he survived, and most days it feels like enough.

Something new begins as spring ends. He’s taken a break during a jog for a smoke, the one thing he just can’t quite, when a warm body presses against him. It happens when he’s got a new job; something boring and mundane, but that keeps him busy enough, keeps his mind buzzing. His mum comes up every weekend he doesn’t go home, and his playlist is exotic. A body presses against him on a smoke break in the middle of a job and touches the white maps on his arms. It begins with an “I’m sorry,” and a “Me too,” and an “I want to come home.” It settles with “Okay” and “Never again” and “I’ll try, I promise.” Arthur takes the cigarette and he chokes on the smoke, on Merlin’s kiss, on promises of tomorrow and the next day and forever.

It starts and it ends with a thought Merlin can’t ever shake forever, but he learns how to leash it and how to space the bad days beneath the covers and under Arthur’s hips and away from the world. It begins, over and over and over and over, and sometimes Merlin doesn’t win, but he never quite loses either. He figures it’s a bit like his smokes. Maybe he never kicks it totally. Maybe he never quite lets it from his grip. Maybe in the end it wins. Maybe it should bother him more, but it doesn’t and that’s the shittiest conclusion he’s ever heard of. It’s the most awful fucking thing that he’s ever caught between his lips, held between his fingers, but it’s solid and real and that is his truth. His story is wrapped in counselors and a mum’s frantic calls and a friend’s hesitant embrace and a lover’s gold band and shows he can’t watch and habits he can’t shake and songs he’ll never stop listening to. It begins, it ends, the way any story does, and Merlin would love to rewrite it some days and other days he thinks it’s not half bad. It doesn’t start at the beginning and he thinks maybe it won’t end until the middle, but he can’t do much else but write it.

 


End file.
